


Journeys End in Lovers Meeting

by 221b_hound



Series: Lock and Key [10]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Do-Over, Frottage, M/M, Roleplay, Sherlock's scars, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-10
Updated: 2016-11-10
Packaged: 2018-08-30 05:14:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8519857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: John learns something new about how Sherlock got the scars on his back, and in the discussion that follows, they play-act a do-over; their reunion as Sherlock had sometimes imagined - fantasised - it had gone.





	

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a rough couple of days for many, perhaps with rougher times to come. This story is my hope, though, that there can always be healing. Whatever lies ahead, let's hope for that.

Mycroft’s visit to Baker Street was not exactly a social call – his visits were never so simple – but he seemed resigned to the fact that Sherlock would refuse the case he’d brought over.

John was fine with that, too. Sherlock had predicted – excuse me, _deduced_ – some of the matter and had been irritable since Mycroft’s car had decanted him onto the pavement.

“You don’t need me. Don’t you have a file about all this?”

John poured hot water into teacups as Sherlock, lip curled, dismissed Mycroft’s request with a wave of his hand.

“Are you quite sure, little brother? Don’t you feel you have a score to settle, perhaps? You needn’t go back to _Serbia_ , of course.  Zoran Ilic is in Albania, crossing into Greece as we speak. I don’t imagine he’d even recognise you.”

John tipped milk into cups – none of this fancy milk jug business for him, plus he knew it annoyed Mycroft to present him with a pre-milked-and-sugared tea.

“Not recognise the prisoner who sent him home to discover his wife cheating on him with the coffin maker next door? Well, I suppose not.”

John placed a cup in front of Sherlock; turned to deliver the other to Mycroft.

Mycroft considered Sherlock’s words. “You may have a point. He didn’t like you very much from the start, and the look on his face was very alarming as he left.”

The crash of the teacup being slammed on the table beside him made Mycroft flinch. He arched his eyebrow down at John, only to find eyes like hot stones glaring back at him.

“You what?” John bit out.

“That is obscure, even for you, Doctor Watson.” Mycroft’s lips compressed prissily and he brushed a splash of tea from his cuff.

John stepped closer to Mycroft – crowding into Mycroft’s space, back rigidly straight, jaw tense, eyes fierce. “You. Fucking. What?”

Mycroft narrowed his eyes, then looked over John’s head to Sherlock for an explanation. Sherlock’s expression was… alarmed. _Oh dear_.

“You were there,” John all but growled.

“Doctor Watson…”

“While Ilic beat him bloody, you were _there_?”

Mycroft shrugged elegantly, as though John’s rage were nothing to him. “Yes. It was terribly inconvenient, leaving the office at that time, and it took simply ages to get the tedious brute out of the room…”

And then _oof_ as John pushed him back against the table.

“You think this is funny?” John said, quiet, calm, clipped. “You were _inconvenienced_ , were you?”

“John.” That was Sherlock, standing close behind John, speaking soothingly. “It’s history.”

John glanced back at Sherlock. “History. Those scars. You told me you got them in Serbia. Beaten, you said, on the last day. You said you talked your way out of it.” John’s fury was transferred back to Mycroft. “You talked your way into an escape, only this bastard was there, from the start, so he says. _Saw the look on Ilic’s face_ , he says. And you didn’t try to stop it, did you Mycroft?”

“It wasn’t the optimal choice,” said Mycroft steadily. He refused to blink or swallow, but he could see John’s hands curling into fists. “Though of course,” he added breezily, “I’m not the one who brawled with Sherlock publicly within days of his return and tore the stitches.”

And Medusa-like, Mycroft had turned John Watson to stone.

One second. Two. Three. John’s Adam’s apple bobbed.

Four seconds. Five. His eyes glittered.

Six. Seven. They narrowed.

“Ilic can go hang,” said Sherlock into the thick silence. “In fact, why don’t you arrange that? Now.”

Mycroft affected to shrug mildly, demonstrating how little this whole exchange bothered him. He stood back from the frostbitten aura around John, and left.

John remained where he had been; jaw set, lips compressed grimly. Eyes glittering.

Sherlock stood beside him but didn’t touch. “John.”

John inhaled. Held his breath. Exhaled.

Sherlock had so many conflicting feelings about this – what Mycroft had done, what he had endured, what John had done and was now thinking of with such frigid ferocity – it sent Sherlock into the time-honoured shelter of waspish irritation.

“I’m not made of porcelain, John.”

That prompted John to clipped speech. “No. You’re made of flesh and blood. Like the rest of us. You bleed, you break, you scar. You’re not indestructible.”

“That’s yet to be proven.” Sardonic, that was the way to play it.

John wasn’t having it. He looked Sherlock right in the eye. “All those people who knew when I didn’t. Did that keep you safe?”

“Yes.”

“So tell me again why I wasn’t one of them.”

“To keep _you_ safe.”

“I’m not porcelain either, you know.”

“No. But...” His resolve to be irritated gave way, because he and John were different now to who they had been when he’d come home and talked with such flippant disregard for John’s pain: unseen through the haze of his own. “But you were precious. _Are_.”

John’s own brittleness gave away beneath such honesty. “But why did you act like that at the restaurant that night? Really?” John caressed Sherlock’s skin as he spoke, as though a gentle touch now negated the brutal work of his hands back then.

“I wanted everything to be the same,” Sherlock confessed, “I wanted it to not have changed me, to have changed _us_. But it did. I wouldn’t see it. Mycroft knew.”

“Mycroft’s an arsehole.”

“Well, yes, there is that.”

“He watched while they beat you.”

“Waited, I suppose, is a better term.”

“And then I carried on where they left off.”

“Hardly. And you didn’t know I’d been injured. Don’t blame yourself.”

John was oddly calm. “I don’t,” he said. His expression was hard to read. Wry, perhaps, but also sad. “I wasn’t…. exactly…” another purse of the lips. “Rational,” he finally chose.

“I suppose not,” Sherlock conceded, “You may not be porcelain but… I suspect I broke you that night.”

“Oh, I’d been broken for some time,” John said, with a melancholy half smile. “Mary had papered over the cracks for a while but…” he shrugged.

The corners of Sherlock’s mouth tucked in, the way they did when the sorrow hit him, for this broken past he had made for them both.

Then John was pressing up against him, sliding his arms around his waist, fingertips caressing the scarred skin of his back through the silk of his shirt.

“I don’t feel guilty. It was such a shock to see you. It felt like being shot. It felt like dying all over again.” It wasn’t an accusation, just a truth that they both knew now. “But I’m so sorry I hurt you.” He nudged his nose against Sherlock’s throat as Sherlock wrapped his arms around John in turn, kissed his brow.

“I hurt you,” Sherlock observed frankly, “I probably deserved it.”

“No.” John kissed the corner of Sherlock’s mouth. “No.” Another kiss. “When I hit you… I was…in pieces. But that doesn’t mean you deserved it. Or this.” His fingers traced the scars through cloth.

“One punch, surely, we can grant you,” breathed Sherlock, trying not to feel it all so much, “My timing was appalling.”

John huffed a laugh, splintering the taut emotion strangling his voice, but he kept stroking Sherlock’s back, kissing his jaw and mouth. “Not the best,” he conceded. “It was nothing like I sometimes imagined you coming back.”

Sherlock bumped his nose against John’s temple. “You imagined that?”

John pulled Sherlock closer and then dropped his hands to Sherlock’s waist. “Not exactly. You were… well. Dead. I stood by your grave and asked for a miracle, but I had no idea how you’d achieve it. But sometimes… I’d just skip to the miracle. I’d imagine what it would be like if you showed up at the clinic or turned out to be some guy selling the Big Issue. You’d look at me, and I’d know you right away.” John looked into Sherlock’s eyes. “You’d say, ‘sorry it took so long to get back. It was stupid going without you. I have a case on if you’re interested…’”

“And what did you do in this scenario?”

“Mostly I called you a git and you apologised for taking off without me and we’d go running off chasing killers in the dark.”

“That’s it?”

“What else?”

“You wouldn’t… _fantasise_?”

“No,” John admitted, “I couldn’t bear it. It was too much of what I’d lost before knowing I even wanted it.”

Sherlock kissed John, soothing away the past grief with present sweetness. “I used to. Sometimes.”

“What?”

“Imagine my return. Somewhat differently to how it turned out.”

“Tell me.” John returned to kissing Sherlock’s throat, and then he stood back, the glitter in his eye become a sparkle. “What did you imagine?”

“Oh,” Sherlock waved his hand as though it were inconsequential, “A lot more laughing and a lot less rage. Still with the ‘you and me against the world’ speech. It was a good speech. Well. For another time it might have been.”

“I don’t mean that,” said John, pressing close to him again. “You did, didn’t you? You _fantasised_.”

The part of Sherlock that wanted to run from the observation was hushed by the part that knew he could have this now. He could tell these secrets and John would do more than listen. John would accept. Embrace. Reciprocate.

“I did,” he murmured.

Then John, who was always so good at being both steady and unexpected, said, “Show me. Let’s…” His arms slid up Sherlock’s waist again, over his back, to his shoulders. “Have a do-over, yeah? What did you want to happen?”

Sherlock went thoughtful, but not for long, because this was reciprocation. He could feel John’s body all warm along his thighs, belly and chest. Warm breath on his face. He could see the willingness in John’s expression, to turn the dark memory of their reunion into something lighter. He could feel John’s sexual interest in the palms of his hands, the licking of his lips, the slight tilt of his hips against Sherlock’s.

“Baker street, usually,” Sherlock confessed. He never was one much for embellished fantasies, set on pirate ships and the like. John was the storyteller; Sherlock built from facts and inferences. In his head, there was an inferred Baker Street, its qualities all known. John in it, comfortingly familiar yet excitingly unpredictable. “I’d come here and you’d be in your chair. Reading. Staring at the fire. Waiting.”

“What did I say? Or did you talk first?”

“Me. Just ‘hello John’.  And you’d look at me and be… happy to see me. Surprised, of course. And before you could get angry – I always knew you would be angry – I would say, ‘I had to go. You had to stay. The snipers were gone but Moriarty had other agents, and he’d sworn to kill you’ and that would be that.”

“He’d sworn to kill you too,” said John.

“Yes, but his agents thought _I_ was dead.”

“Others knew you weren’t.”

“Others who were safe. Who were here to watch over you.”

“I would have gone with you. Anywhere.”

“I know. But I couldn’t risk you. My goal was to dismantle Moriarty’s empire, but the only point of that was to ensure they couldn’t reach you.”

John knew all of this. Sherlock was aware as he was saying it that he wasn’t really telling the John here in front of him. He was trying somehow to tell that imaginary John in that never-happened past, why he’d done it. The do-over. Getting it right.

“And then…?” prompted John.

“And then you would say that you’d missed me.”

“I missed you, Sherlock. Every day.” John blinked. “Like that?”

“Yes,” said Sherlock. “Like that.”

“I missed you so much.”

“I missed you too, John. I’m… sorry for how I left. It wasn’t ideal, I know…”

“No.”

“But I’m here. We can be a team again. You and me against the world, John. Like it used to be.”

John had drawn back, hands no longer on Sherlock’s body. His own body language had altered in subtle ways, and Sherlock didn’t know when it had changed from John-now asking about this imagined reunion, to play-acting the John-then, setting himself back in time. Their living room was now the time capsule for Baker Street back-then.

“Does it have to be like it used to be?” asked John.

“John?”

“I’ve thought a lot about us, since you left.”

“Yes. So have I.”

John blinked. “Is this how it went, when you imagined it?”

Sherlock swallowed. “It varied. But… yes. Sometimes you moved first. Sometimes I did. Sometimes both of us…”

Before he’d quite finished, John leaned up to press his lips to Sherlock’s. Sherlock took John’s face in his hands and kissed him harder. His heart pounded with the feeling of John’s mouth on him now, juxtaposed with the memory of wanting it, with the longing. With pretending he could have it, long ago when he sheltered in abandoned buildings in Ukraine; when he slept in an uninhabited Polish campsite in winter; when he lay filthy and ragged and exhausted in a forest in Serbia.

“Well,” murmured John, pulling away, “You’re not a ghost, anyhow. I used to wish I believed in them, so there was some way, any way, you could come back.”

“I owe you a thousand apologies,” said Sherlock, in remembered misery.

“No. No you don’t. You did it for me. For us. You said.”

“Yes.”

“I got a tattoo, you know. To keep you close to me. Everything was empty without you, so I…” John unbuttoned his shirt, to show the top of his lock tattoo, over his heart. “So I made sure you were close to me all the time.”

Sherlock’s fingers went to the ink, as they always did. Traced this evidence of John’s regard embedded in his skin. “You love me?” he asked. Because at some point he, too, had stopped being Sherlock-now, and was Sherlock-then, reliving a moment that had never been.

“Yes, I love you,” said John. “Of course I love you.”

They were kissing then, hard, deep, tongues entwined, arms clutching to each other, then pushing at clothes, their mouths and fingers demanding skin to touch, to taste, to drink in.

They stumbled, shedding clothes, towards the sofa, while Sherlock sucked a mark onto John’s shoulder, John’s vest askew. John tangled his fingers in Sherlock’s hair, drew Sherlock’s mouth back up for kissing. They tumbled onto the couch, Sherlock underneath, until John turned them.

“Your back,” said John, “You’ve been hurt.”

Sherlock almost flinched from the cushions on his back in an echo of a physical pain no longer felt. “Don’t stop,” whispered Sherlock hoarsely, digging his fingers into John’s arms.

John tugged at his own clothes and at Sherlock’s, then pulled Sherlock on top of him. They were still in pants, Sherlock’s shirt unbuttoned and with a sock on one foot; John’s vest rucked up under his armpits. “Sherlock,” he said, “Sherlock, god.” He held Sherlock so tightly against his body it would have been a struggle for Sherlock to rise, if he’d wanted to; which he didn’t.

“Don’t go without me again,” said John, “Promise me.”

“Never,” Sherlock promised. His biting kisses left a bloom of reddening skin along John’s exposed chest and throat, “You and me against the world. I swear it.”

John planted one foot on the floor and lifted the other so he could rub his inner thigh all up Sherlock’s thigh and hip. He grabbed Sherlock’s arse and pulled, grinding up against the pressure. His hands smoothed up Sherlock’s back, then underneath Sherlock’s unbuttoned shirt, his palms smoothing over the old scars. “I won’t let them hurt you anymore,” said John, voice rough, before he clutched Sherlock tight again, kissing him hard.

Sherlock rose up and put his own foot on the floor, his thigh between John’s, his other knee braced on the cushions. His elbows pressed down either side of John’s shoulders, his fingers were threaded in John’s hair, and he rutted between John’s thighs. He kissed John breathlessly, ferociously, and John met each hungry, open-mouthed kiss with one of his own. Both still in pants stretched over eager erections, they ground against each other, grunting and huffing and holding tight.

Sherlock buried his face in John’s neck as climax curled tight in his groin, and uninhibited, more real than he could ever possibly have imagined this back-then unknown joy, he frotted against John, John against him, until first one then the other cried out and, still rubbing frantically against each other, they came stickily in their boxers.

They subsided, John with his arms still wrapped around Sherlock. He was laughing, that sound of earthy elation that sometimes took him after they’d wanted each other so much they hardly paused to strip. Sherlock nipped John’s clavicle, only making him giggle harder, and that set Sherlock off. Laughing. Going wheezy with breathlessness. Holding John so tight and laughing at their messy do-over, neither of them broken any more…

The first sob surprised Sherlock even more than it did John.

In the midst of a breathy giggle, Sherlock’s throat thickened and spasmed, and then again, and with his forehead pressed to John’s warm skin, his fingers suddenly clenched against John’s ribs. He gave a soft wail, then stopped in horror at the sound. His next breath was a sob; a strangled inhale, then another sob, and another.

Sherlock tried first to smother the sound against his own shoulder, and as his eyes filled, spilled, he turned aside, wanting only to hide this thing he didn’t understand.

But John’s arms were circling him, holding tight, pulling him close.

“Don’t go away from me,” John pleaded. He shifted, pushing himself against Sherlock’s body, when Sherlock resisted being pulled closer to him. “It’s okay,” John said, “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

And Sherlock remembered that he didn’t have to hide any more. He turned into John’s embrace, turned into the shelter of John’s body and his voice, and let himself be wracked with sobs that felt shockingly incomprehensible but also horribly welcome.  He sobbed until sobs subsided into weeping, and he clung to John, who cradled him, caressed him. Who didn’t tell him to shush or to stop being a child or anything other than, “I’ve got you, I’ve got you, it’s all right. You’re okay. I’ve got you.”

Then even the weeping ceased and Sherlock lay in John’s arms, his face tucked under John’s chin. John’s arms held him, hands warm across his back. The faint tinge of shame Sherlock felt at the loss of control melted away with every caress of John’s hand in his hair, every kiss on his brow, every soft murmur, _I’ve got you._ He nestled there, breathing wetly through mucus and drying tears, occasionally sniffing.

“Here.” John stretched, seeking the box of tissues on the side table. His rucked up vest had drooped down again, and Sherlock rubbed his face in the fabric.

John paused with a handful of tissues. “Did you just wipe your nose on my vest?”

A pause, then, “Yes.”

“Grub,” said John, but in good humour, “Help me get it off then.”

Sherlock pushed, John pulled, and he managed to get the white vest over his head and off without smearing himself. Sherlock bunched it in his hands and wiped his eyes and nose again before dropping it to the floor. As he straightened, John adjusted himself to lay over Sherlock. He kissed Sherlock’s damp cheeks, then his lips.

Sherlock hadn’t known there’d been any broken bits left in him until this, now; the sudden feeling of a hidden crack in himself, sealed at last.

“Everything you went through,” murmured John, kissing him, “And that’s the homecoming you got from me. A black eye.”

Sherlock tilted up his chin. “I suppose it balances the leave-taking I foisted on you.”

John gave him a stern, unhappy look. “Stop it. This isn’t tit for tat. Hurt for hurt. And you don’t have to keep joking about it.”

And he really didn’t. Sherlock nuzzled against John’s bare chest instead, kissing the tattoo. “No joking. But it’s true. The manner of my leaving ruptured… us. The reasons seemed sound at the time, and I often wondered if I’d ever survive to return at all. I always knew it was naïve to act as though it hadn’t changed us. But I suppose I needed to believe I had an _us_ to come back to, in order to survive.”

“There was always going to be an _us_. Just a different version.”

“And now we are different again.” Sherlock wriggled around the narrow sofa and squashed his body alongside John’s.

“I missed you so much,” John said again, “And whatever else was happening then, what I said was true. I never cared how it was done. Only that you gave me my miracle. You came back. You came through. Like you always do.”

Sherlock’s reply was a hum and he kissed John’s sternum. John combed Sherlock’s hair with his fingers.

“So,” John asked nonchalantly, “Is that how the fantasy usually went? Us rubbing one out on one another on the sofa?”

“Of course not,” said Sherlock, licking at one of John’s nipples now. “Usually there was a bedroom. Lube. Me fucking you, or vice versa.”

“Bedroom’s right back there.”

“Hmmm.”

“And there seems to be a hard-on right down there.”

“Two,” Sherlock corrected him.

“Quite right. So. You want to have an alternative ending to our do-over?”

Sherlock stretched up to kiss John languidly. He felt like his body was filled with music, with a friendly fire from the hearth, warming but not burning. He felt light yet anchored, and whole.

“I want to get out of these disgusting pants,” he said, “They’re sticking to me. And then I want to take you to bed and fuck you.”

“Is that what you’d say in the fantasy?”  John asked cheekily as he squirmed away. He jumped up, hopping as he divested himself of his own ruined underwear, then scooped up pants and vest, threw them at Sherlock and took off at a run for the bedroom.

Sherlock flung the items after John’s retreating back, admired the form of John’s bum in motion, then raced after him to deliver a stinging slap to that fine arse. Soon Sherlock was as naked as John, and they were laughing and then panting and then there was the squish of lube, legs in the air, thrusting and gasping and shouting and, a little later, gentle snoring.

John was wrapped along Sherlock’s back, today big spoon to Sherlock’s little, kissing the nape of Sherlock’s neck. His hand rested at the top of Sherlock’s stomach, fingertip just grazing the base of Sherlock’s key tattoo.

John didn’t know why, but he’d felt something unknot in himself with this roleplay, and seen it in Sherlock too. 

He didn’t feel guilty about his reaction when Sherlock had so miscalculated the mood on his return. How John responded… it really was like being shot. Dying for the third time. Once in Afghanistan, once on the street in front of St Bart’s as Sherlock fell, and then in that restaurant. Each one a bullet to the chest; bleeding out, shattered, wanting to live and not knowing how.

But he could feel not guilty about a reaction that was just a form of bleeding out, and still feel sorry for it.

How had this been the first time he’d apologised for it? How had he not known how much he needed to, or how much Sherlock needed to hear it?

Or how much Sherlock had needed to be welcomed home and told he was safe, after everything he, too, had suffered. Whether or not he’d chosen to face those dangers alone, alone he’d been.

Not now, though. Not any more. Not ever again.

John kissed Sherlock’s shoulders and burrowed his nose into the dark curls behind Sherlock’s ear.

“You and me against the world,” he said in a low voice. “Always.”

Sherlock, not as asleep as he’d seemed, reached back to squeeze John’s hip. “Yes. Always.”

 


End file.
